FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

powerHouse Books is pleased to announce the October 2017 release of

Wonder Girls:
Changing Our World
By Paola Gianturco and Alex Sangster
Foreword by Musimbi Kanyoro

Girls as young as 10 are banding together to transform the world, leveraging their energy and intelligence, creativity and confidence, determination and dreams.

Wonder Girls: Changing Our World is the first book to document these girl-led groups, which are improving health, education, equality, and the environment; stopping child marriage, domestic violence, trafficking, and war. The book features 15 groups of girls, all age 10 to 18, who are tackling challenges in 13 countries in the Middle East, Asia, North and Latin America, Africa, and Oceania.

For this book, Paola Gianturco and her 11-year-old granddaughter, Alex Sangster, teamed up to interview and photograph 102 girls, each of whom tells her own story in her own words.

In this book, you will watch girls lobby U.S. senators; see Mexican girls invent mobile phone apps; meet Malawian girls who convinced Parliament to outlaw child marriage. You will eavesdrop on Ugandan girls as they advocate for girls' rights at a UN meeting. And you will meet other girls as they write blogs, petitions, poetry, create radio shows, videos, invent dances, songs, and works of art to promote their causes.

Wonder Girls: Changing Our World is a call to action to help these girls accomplish their important work. Sangster's sections, the finale of each chapter, tell you how.

One hundred percent of the authors’ royalties from Wonder Girls will go to The Global Fund for Women to benefit grassroots groups of activist girls and women around the world.

Paola Gianturco, author-photographer, has documented women’s issues in 62 countries. Her six books on these topics have all been published by powerHouse Books. Paola’s images have been exhibited at the United Nations, UNESCO, The Field Museum/Chicago, and more. She lectures internationally, presented a TED talk in Dubai, and has been a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, NPR, and Voice of America programs, among others. Paola serves on the advisory boards of three nonprofits: Rise Up/Let Girls Lead, Pencils for Africa, and Global Grandmothers. In 2014, Women’s e-News named her one of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century.”

Alex Sangster, author-photographer, is Paola’s granddaughter. Alex is something of a “wonder girl” herself. She and her sister launched a children’s program at a global poverty conference in Mexico. After conducting FaceTime and Skype interviews with activist girls in 13 countries, Alex wrote the sections titled “How You Can Change the World,” in each chapter of this book. Alex captured almost all of the images in the chapters about activist girls in Los Angeles and Mexico.

Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro is the President and CEO of Global Fund for Women. In 1998, Musimbi was general secretary (CEO) of the World YWCA and transformed it into a young-women-led organization. She was subsequently Director for Population and Reproductive Health at David and Lucile Packard Foundation. In 2015, Forbes Magazine named her one of 10 women “power brands” working for gender equality. Musimbi has PhDs in both Linguistics and Feminist Theology.